Wednesday night’s speakers at the Republican National Convention are turning up the heat on “Obamacare” — a red-meat subject headliners largely ignored Tuesday night.

Paul Ryan laid into the health care law in his acceptance speech, calling it the kind of law a “free country” should never have.

“Obamacare comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free country,” Ryan said. “The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.”

He also declared that “greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare,” blaming the law for “$716 billion, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama …all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.”

It's a shift from Tuesday night when top speakers like Chris Christie made just a passing reference to “putting the world's greatest health care system in the hands of federal bureaucrats.” Ann Romney didn’t mention it. And even Rick Santorum — who based much of his presidential campaign on being the right guy to repeal the law — gave the whole subject a pass.

Two of the Republican state leaders who took the health care law to the Supreme Court — Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens — set the stage for Ryan with a harsh give-and-take Wednesday night about the constitutional threats they say the law imposes on the nation.

Bondi even claimed a partial victory from the Supreme Court, arguing that it had sided with the states by ruling that Congress couldn’t impose the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause and that it couldn’t make the states expand Medicaid. But it said the main reason the court upheld the law, declaring that the mandate was actually a tax, was the most telling of all.

“The president can’t bring himself to acknowledge publicly that the only reason this unaffordable law still stands is because it is a tax,” Bondi asked.

“Tonight, we ask you: Do you want skyrocketing health insurance premiums?” Bondi asked. “Do you want a job-destroying insurance mandate that strangles our businesses? … Do you want the government to steal billions of dollars from Medicare to hide the true cost of Obamacare?”

And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) insisted the law is still unconstitutional — no matter what the Supreme Court said.

“When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were: I still think it is unconstitutional. …Even my wife said, 'Can’t you please count to 10 before you speak?' So, I’ve had time now to count to 10 and, you know what? I still think it’s unconstitutional,” Paul said.
“I think if James Madison, himself — the father of the Constitution — were here today he would agree with me: the whole damn thing is still unconstitutional,” he said.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 9:19 p.m. on August 29, 2012.